Although formed in 1988 and despite regular appearances at
the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the ensemble Firebird are
still not as prominent as they deserve to be. They numbering some excellent
players amidst their ranks including clarinettist Roger Heaton, oboist
Christopher Redgate and conductor Barrie Webb. Mr Webb also happens to
be a trombonist specialising in the contemporary repertoire for the instrument.

The booklet note mentions that the principal objective
of the ensemble is to tackle new works alongside the more established
repertoire of the last century. They have no special allegiance to any
one school or stylistic genre. This disc was recorded over a period
of three years in Huddersfield where the ensemble have a residency at
the university. They offer six works by five Italian composers, ranging
from Giacinto Scelsi, probably the best known name, to figures who are
considerable less familiar.

The only composer represented twice is Milan-born Luca
Francesconi, a former student of Stockhausen and one time assistant
to Luciano Berio. His Viaggiatore Insonne, of 1986, sets the
fleeting poem ‘Sleepless Traveller’ by Sandro Penna, a text rich in
visual atmosphere. This is set with the instruction that the singer
delivers the words in a non-operatic way, a manner the composer relates
to baroque or pre-bel canto technique. Francesconi creates passages
of considerable beauty here. There are soaring and notably lyrical instrumental
lines that coalesce well with the voice of Alison Wells, who is careful
to never over dominate. The textures can be complex yet at the same
time gentle and transparent. By comparison, the work from which the
disc takes its title, Plot in Fiction, of three years later,
is a harder edged affair with a greater degree of textural density.
It has a solo part of stamina-sapping virtuosity, admirably played by
Christopher Redgate. The key here is to find the "plot" through
the "fiction", or as the composer puts it, the narrative thread
that runs through the complexity and intricacy of a "forest of
daily symbols".

Enrico Correggia takes as the premise for his work
Già l’Eolia di Notte, the principle of Yin and Yan, or
masculine and feminine. The strings assume the role of the former in
astringent, melodically deprived material whilst the wind carry the
greater melodic interest. An attempt at integration by the strings sees
them adopt a midway point between the two initial extremes. What results
is a work of interesting shifting textures, colours and textural imagination.

Ada Gentile has the distinction of being the only female
composer represented. The title In unSilenzio Ordinato,
gives a clue as to the low dynamic levels that figure throughout much
of the work. It’s a curiously satisfying piece, full of scurrying, restless
energy that ultimately works itself out and fades away to nothing.

Alison Wells is at the forefront in Dario Maggi’s Im
finsteren Wald, a ten-minute cantata to a dark text by Georg Trakl,
scored for soprano, bass clarinet, marimba and piano. Wells once again
is a highly convincing soloist although I was perhaps less convinced
by this work’s ability to sustain interest in the manner that some of
the other works achieve.

In several ways Giacinto Scelsi is the odd one out
amongst these composers, the obvious reason being that he is the only
non-living composer amongst those featured. But musically he also ploughed
very much his own path, coming to reject the use of melody in favour
of gradually shifting changes of pitch, dynamic and timbre influenced
by forms of eastern meditation and actually lending his work a noticeably
eastern atmosphere. Kya, for clarinet and seven instruments,
is representative of this later period of his career. What his work
from this period does is to effectively take music back to its very
barest constituent parts. It’s not easy listening but given the chance
it does possess the ability to draw the listener into its very personal
world.

This is a disc very much in the true Metier mould of
challenging and probing our musical senses. It is however a disc that
offers undoubted rewards upon repeated listening for those who allow
themselves to become immersed in the "plot". The performances
by Firebird are accomplished and it is to be hoped that we hear more
from them in recordings to come.

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